for anna

first poem for a new year

anna has been carrying around

the dog-eared Robert Frost lately

she wants to read poetry with me

 

and sometimes we read bedtime poems

and sometimes i put her off til a little later

because there's always time for frost

 

but this morning

when we were waiting for the school bus

i thought to distract her

and had her looking at the tree in the field across the road

and how the branches laced through the blue black sky

and stars shone through the cracks like tree ornaments

and i had her taste the deliciousness of cold air in a new year

i told her that was poetry

 

and she said

that i should put it in my next

book of poetry

and i wondered if we shouldn't write it together

Author's Note

too new, bear with me

Reviews

[G. Cedillo]

This is a real treat. A singularly rare theme on this site, and a lovely meditation on poetry itself. I really enjoyed it. Especially the ending line, what a great thought and the drama of the poem unfolds so well to get us to that motherly yearning. I would suggest bringing more emphasis of the earlier thought of "[putting] her off til a little later" just another line or two or three to bring those later lines of finding the poetic moments even more stark, more meaningful.
Cut down on some of the verbage Don't be too committed to complete sentences. In fact, I think this would work better with shorter, terse clauses and, in more parts, a shorter abrupt style. The beginning is great, though. Good opening lines.

In the end I want to see more from this thought,read more of this poem and that's the sweetest feeling,

thanks for sharing
gc

[A. J. Bozdar]

a little hard to get you. read RUMI a little more. I wish you all the best. You are doing good. In my opinion, you need a little more practice. Recheck your work done, read more and more, read again, read thrice. You'll get better and better. I am new too. I am fond of Rumi too. Let's be friends.

take care

[Emily B]

the poem is new, not the poet :)

i still need to come back and sand off a few rough edges, it needs a little polish here and there, but all in all, the poem does exatly what it was meant to do

[A. J. Bozdar]

:)

[Kenneth The Poet]

This is a reason why humans find purpose.

[SkinlessFrank]

our children ARE poetry

[michael.c.m]

I think you have found a new substance, an overture, if you will. I like it.

[Marie Anzalone]

I used to do this beautiful exercise with young children, when I taught environmenetal education. We would approach a big old fabulous tree, and come up with all the words we could think of to describe it. We then fashioned the words into a poem dedicated to "our" tree. I think you would learn a lot writing poetry with Anna.

Happy New Year!

[Jesse Torres II]

Hi Emily, this poem does for me what a poem should. That is, it takes me to "a place," makes me aware of little nuances, great big concepts, universality and interconnectedness, contradictions and cohesion. This is real and serious work.

[Emily B]

thank you, it's been a long dry spell

[h d e rushin]

The Frost of modenism, that self conscious one who broke with the past in a search
for new forms of expression, is the one that stoked the interest of a little Black boy
growing up on the east side of Detroit.

When your friend saw the tree, she saw Frost hanging like a plum:

"It flows beside us in this water brook,
But it flows over us. It flows between us
To separate us for a panic moment.
It flows between us, over us, and with us.
And it is time, strength, tone, light, life and love
And even substance lapsing unsubstantial;
The Universe cataract of death
That spends to nothingness and unresisted,
Save by some strange resistance in itself
Not just a swerving, but a throwing back,
As if rregret werre in it and were scared.
It has this throwing backward on itself
So that the fall of most of it is always
Raising a little, sending up a little.
Our life runs down in sending up the clock.
The brook runs down in sending up our life.
The sun runs down in sending up the brook.
And there is something sending up the sun.
It is this backward motion toward the source,
Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in,
The tribute of the current to the source.
It is from this in nature we are from.
It is most us"

from "West-running Brook".
Perhaps it's best you write your words together, dana

[Emily B]

i'm teaching miss anna about poetry, she's teaching me about how to live

[The Analog Kid]

Yes you should write it together. I need to do my first poem of 2013 also...

[Robin]

that second stanza was a perfect sprinkle of Magik, as you moved the reader to a special place .

Poetry

[Ken Simm.]

A moment of Frost. Never unwelcome. Like this poem of a morninig. Never unwelcome. Like Emily's writing........